May 12, 2012

Is CHP giving green light to Hizmet?

Mahmut Övür, Sabah

I went to Stockholm to attend the Anatolian Culture Festival and preliminary rounds of the Turkish Olympiad competition. I also visited a Turkish school [established by the Hizmet movement, the followers of Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen] in Stockholm with Adnan Keskin from the Republican People’s Party (CHP).

What the media were most interested in, of course, was Keskin’s visiting a Hizmet movement school just after CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu visited a madrasah [school] in Bosnia. All of these developments lead us to the question of whether the CHP is giving the green light to the Hizmet movement. Keskin has only said that he was on a personal trip and that drawing a political conclusion from this trip is not right. This does not answer the question, of course, but the trip itself gives some clues as to the answer.

Published on Today's Zaman, 08 May 2012, Tuesday